Abstract
Is there a distinct disciplinary core (or foundation of agreed on knowledge) in sociology? Should we define a core in our broad field to build consensus? If so, what should it look like? We address these questions by presenting three viewpoints that lean for and against identifying a core for department curricula, students, and the public face of sociology. First, “There really is not much, if any, core.” Second, sociology is “a habit of the mind” (a sociological imagination). Third, key content of a sociological core can be identified using a long or short list. Centripetal forces pressure the discipline to define itself for assessment, transfer articulations, general education, the trend toward interdisciplinary courses, and the public face of sociology. We describe previous efforts for the introductory course and sociology curricula. We conclude with a discussion of everyday practices in sociology that are built on the conception of a core.
“What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know.”
St. Augustine’s philosophical approach to time may be similar to how sociologists have viewed what constitutes an agreed on foundation of knowledge of our discipline: We know what it is as long as we don’t have to describe it in any detail or agree on it. Some of this complexity is to be expected in a field as broad and divergent as ours, and indeed, at one level or another, we have been grappling with these sorts of questions for a century (Howard 2010). For most of this time, it has been relatively easy to keep these matters in the background; however, currently there are important centripetal forces in U.S. higher education—assessment regimes, transfer articulation agreements, general education, pressures for increased interdisciplinary courses, and others—that are exerting pressures, some quite forceful, on all disciplines to clearly identify and assess their unique contributions to student learning. In the following, we explore organizational and intellectual reasons for and against identifying a core of sociological knowledge.
These forces have been directed primarily at the teaching content and not at the research foci of disciplines, and as a result, much of the energy in sociology’s (writ large) response has emerged from what might be called a “teaching” perspective. ASA-charged task forces, for example, “Liberal Learning and the Sociology Major” (Eberts et al. 1991; McKinney et al. 2004), “Sociology and General Education” (Keith et al. 2007), and “The Articulation of Sociology in Two-year and Four-year Sociology Programs” (Zingraff et al. 2001), have produced thoughtful reports, while ASA’s own staff has done studies and assembled materials (e.g., “The Sociology Bachelor’s Degree and Beyond” project, American Sociological Association 2015b; “What are they Doing with a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology,” Spalter-Roth and Van Vooren 2008) that take some of these matters head on. High school standards (American Sociological Association 2015a), Educational Testing Service, and Social Science Research Council discussions add to attempts to identify key factors making up the core of sociology.
The goal of a “core,” as defined here, is to lay out distinct disciplinary knowledge to build consensus about important learning goals—what students should know at the end of an introductory (or first) course and on completion of the major (see e.g., Keith and Ender 2004a, 2004b; Wagenaar 1991, 2004a, 2004b). This core generally includes the essential content that may have differences in learning objectives for introductory (or first) courses, content that meets general education learning goals, courses that are designed specifically for majors, and/or the sociology major requirements. Core content can be introduced in the first course; reintroduced, developed, and practiced in later courses; and ultimately expected as competencies by the time a sociology major graduates with a bachelor’s degree. This discussion considers all three levels of the core as relevant to the topic.
From 2012 to 2014, panel sessions at both the ASA national meeting and various regional sociology meetings 1 featured discussions on the core in sociology and considered the following questions:
Should there be a core?
Is there an agreed on core in sociology—one that should be taught in Introductory Sociology and reflected in major requirements?
What should this core look like?
Where do we go from here?
The purpose of this article is to reflect on these questions with the goal of stimulating a broader disciplinary discussion. We start with the question of whether there should be a core. If the answer is no, then there really is not much to discuss. Having made the case that there should be a core, asking what constitutes that core is essentially to ask “What is sociology?” It is our hope that this discussion, focused on the Introductory Sociology course (for most non-sociologists, our “public face”; Zipp 2012), upper level courses, and the major requirements, will result in a more coherent approach to our presentation of sociology to a wider audience.
Should there be a core?
More than a decade ago, Abbott (2000) addressed the dangers of sociology as a discipline without a core: Sociology is particularly endangered, among the social sciences, because it is organized around an archipelago of empirical questions: race and ethnicity, work and occupations, stratification, population, urban studies, organizations, and so on. It is not organized around a method, as is anthropology around ethnography; nor around a theoretical system, as is economics around choice models; nor around a concept, as is political science around power. Sociology’s methods and theories are a grab bag (the polite phrase is “multi-paradigm science”) when compared with the relative consistency of any of the other social sciences. Thus, whenever an island of the archipelago decides to become a separate principality, sociology has no obvious way of retaining dominion. In the typical mega-bookstore, the sections on women’s studies and African-American studies are now far bigger than those for sociology, even though much of the work in both areas was/is being done by people with sociology Ph.D.s. (P. 297)
Abbott’s comments focus on both intellectual and structural challenges. In many ways, the critical juxtaposition of these problems appears most clearly in the representation of our work as a field of study for undergraduate students. A shared understanding of what sociologically trained minds should and do know—a core—benefits the discipline intellectually in at least three ways.
First, it provides a foundation upon which to meet the expectation to assess student learning in our courses and defend and justify sociology’s role as part of a general education curriculum. If we have not agreed on what students should be learning or the skills students should be developing, it is impossible to assess whether they are learning that content and developing those skills. Our contribution in general education becomes generic, and we risk losing our place within general education curricula.
Second, a core strengthens the discipline and our ability to design our major programs. Our own clarity about what we offer as a distinctive body of knowledge and form of analysis shapes our claims to the critical value of the sociological imagination and the type of analysis we produce. In a related vein, it is hard to be part of a push for more interdisciplinary teaching without having some agreement as to the contributions of our discipline.
Third, failure to have a consensual core makes it difficult for our majors to develop a distinct professional identity, especially at the undergraduate level, that can be marketed externally and help graduates find their niche, let alone a job related to their major. That U.S. sociology almost always has fewer majors than psychology on college campuses attests to this problem. The general public at least has a basic idea of what a psychologist does but likely not a sociologist. How then will employers understand what it is our graduates can offer their organizations (Greenwood 2013)?
Normally these intellectual reasons would be justification enough, but there also are serious external factors that are shaping sociology and that increase the importance of having an agreed on core. We offer a few examples of these structural or organizational forces and how in the absence of our actions, others are creating or have already created a sociological core.
A perfect example of such forces relates to important changes in the MCAT (the Medical College Admission Test) that have the potential to have significant implications for content in Introductory Sociology (Kain 2012). Starting in April 2015, the newest version of the test includes a section on the social and behavioral sciences. Thirty percent of this new section consists of questions drawn from Introductory Sociology, and medical schools might require—or at least strongly recommend—that applicants take Introductory Sociology in order to be better prepared for this exam and their medical training. Not only are there some general content areas—for example, “social stratification,” “social inequality,” “understanding social structure,” and “demographic characteristics and processes”—but also very specific topics on which students may be tested. Sociologists may be surprised to learn that the theoretical approaches include our “big three” as well as “social constructionism,” “exchange-rational choice,” and “feminist theory” (Association of American Medical Colleges 2013). All sociologists might want to examine these content areas on the MCAT; although sociologists were involved in the development of the test, the questions do not necessarily represent what is currently covered in Introductory Sociology.
Two other external organizational influences are either creating increased pressure for core content in sociology and other disciplines or directly shaping what the core needs to include. The first of these pressures is best characterized by the assessment requirements that are now endemic in U.S. higher education. Program review and assessment of student learning has always been a fact of life in accreditation, but today in this new assessment regime, there is increased demand for departments to identify learning goals, outcomes, assessment measurement, feedback loops, and so on. One of the key aspects of high-quality assessment is that departments need to ensure that their key learning outcomes represent the discipline and are introduced and reinforced throughout the curriculum. In line with this expectation, departments can think about Introductory Sociology courses as the place to introduce some or all of these learning outcomes, and thus departments and the discipline will need to determine what these general outcomes will be. Consistent with the Liberal Learning and the Sociology Major Updated (McKinney et al. 2004), the recommendation of a cumulative curriculum with several levels from introductory to the capstone course will allow reinforcement to occur in other sociology courses at each level. The second form of external influences creating pressure to identify a core in sociology is transfer articulation agreements. As of 2010, 36 states had a statewide transfer articulation program that assures students that certain courses taken at one state institution will transfer automatically to other state institutions (Smith 2010). In addition, 46 states had cooperative agreements in cases where a statewide or system policy did not apply (Smith 2010). This path is a valuable part of helping students complete degrees in a timely and cost-effective manner, but it is only possible if courses are at least minimally comparable (see Zingraff et al. 2001).
Consider the cases of two states—Ohio and Colorado—to provide some sense of how different states have decided what needs to be covered in introductory sociology at the postsecondary level in order to be in these transfer modules. The Ohio articulation agreement states that students should be able to demonstrate an understanding of the following: (*indicates inclusion is required):
the sociological perspective, the theoretical foundations (functionalism, conflict, and symbolic interactionism), and the contributions of major theorists to the development of these perspectives;*
the ways in which sociologists gather, interpret, and evaluate data, including both quantitative and qualitative methodologies;*
the components of culture and their impact on shaping human behavior and world views;*
the elements of social structure and the organization of society;*
the major theories of crime, deviance, and systems of social control;
systems of stratification, including global inequality, racial stratification, social class, and gender stratification;
the major social institutions, such as marriage and the family, religion, politics, the economy, health care, and/or education;
additional topics such as population, urbanization, the environment, war/terrorism, and major theories of social change. 2
Colorado allows for two different introductory courses: The first “examines the basic concepts, theories, and principles of sociology as well as human culture, social groups, and the social issues of age, gender, class, and race” while the second “examines social institutions and organizations from the macro perspective [and] emphasizes issues of social change, demography, social movements, and conflicts and trends within education, religion, family, political, and economic structures.” 3
The increased prevalence of transfer articulation policies highlights one of the significant costs of not having a core. This juxtaposition of transfer articulation agreements and the fact that one-third of all undergraduates graduate from a different institution than the one where they started college is a significant reality for many institutions (Gonzalez 2012). Due to these trends, more and more sociology students will take their introductory courses not in their home university—and their home university will increasingly need to count that course taken elsewhere. Without some shared understanding of what should be covered in Introductory Sociology courses, both students and departments may feel the negative results. Students may not have the necessary preparation for upper division courses, and departments may be forced to consider additional bridge courses to assure the requisite content.
In summary, there are ample intellectual and organizational reasons for sociology to develop a more comprehensive core, one that can be taught in our introductory courses and throughout the major. Not only are we an “archipelago” (Abbott 2000), losing islands to other disciplines (who get Nobel Prize “credit” for those ideas, e.g., behavioral economics), but also we risk not even being visible above the sea’s surface. It appears that in the absence of sociologists defining a core, others are making decisions for us; perhaps we should define the core ourselves.
Is there an agreed on core in sociology?
Efforts to define a core for sociology date back to the early 20th century, and then as now, these attempts have focused more on Introductory Sociology than on the major or field. Similar to our discipline as a whole, some of this work has been empirical, while other contributions might best be seen as reflections from the vantage point of experienced scholars. At the risk of some oversimplification, we have attempted to provide an analytical summary of approaches sociologists have taken and the results achieved in defining this core. As can be seen in the following, these outcomes can be arrayed on a continuum that ranges from “There really is not much, if any, ‘core’” to what proponents of having a defined core suggest are essential elements of the discipline on which there is general agreement. We discuss three points of view in turn.
There Really Is Not Much, If Any, Core
There are several bits of evidence to support the notion that there is very little, if any, recognized core in sociology. First, in his overview of the history of the teaching movement within ASA, Howard (2010) noted that in 1909 a committee with 10 members was formed to investigate the introductory sociology course and make recommendations for the standardization of the course and its content. The effort failed as the committee members could not agree on a detailed outline for the Introductory Sociology course, and they simply appended their personal course outlines to the committee’s report.
Second, some more recent studies have found little agreement regarding a core. Wagenaar (2004b) surveyed 301 sociologists regarding how much coverage topics should receive in the introductory course and in the discipline. When asked to identify the five most important concepts, topics, and skills for coverage in the introductory sociology course, no single item received the support of more than 10 percent of respondents (Wagenaar 2004b:9). Keith and Ender (2004b) compared the content of 35 introductory sociology textbooks from the 1940s and the 1990s. Although there was a commonly shared structure in the textbooks in terms of chapter headings, the concepts used to introduce the discipline were quite diverse, with the majority of concepts included in only 1 textbook and fewer than 3 percent of the concepts found in all 35 textbooks.
Keith and Ender (2004b:19) argue that they could find no evidence of a core in their data. Moreover, they state that the absence of a core “reduces the social value of sociology as a scientific field and erodes its creditability as a discipline.” They argue that such a core should be reflected in a field’s textbooks. The pressures facing the textbook industry today are such that we might expect them to homogenize content, but in fact, according to this study, this does not appear to be the case. If not in our textbooks, then where can we find a core?
In a similar vein, a few years ago, two faculty members engaged in designing an experimental introductory course emailed their colleagues at a large research university with a one-question survey: “List five core concepts or subjects that you feel should be covered in an Introductory Sociology course.” The usual 50 percent response rate yielded about 20 return emails; not a single subject appeared on all the responses, though what might be called consensus was reached on a tiny number of concepts, including inequality, race, and gender. The list of other nominees approached 50 (Schwartz and Smith 2010). The conclusion from these studies is that many previous attempts have failed to identify a core in sociology.
A Habit of the Mind
The next step along the continuum is occupied by those who contend that what unites sociologists and what distinguishes us from other disciplines is our unique way of viewing and analyzing the social world. This idea is usually expressed in terms of the “sociological perspective,” “sociological imagination,” (Mills 1959), Abbott’s (2000) “meliorative” orientation, or the “sociological eye” (Collins 1998). Collins (1998) said it well: Does sociology have a core? Yes, but it is not an eternal essence; not a set of texts or ideas, but an activity. The activity is this: It is looking at the world around us, the immediate world you and I live in, through the sociological eye. (P. 2)
Persell, Pfeiffer, and Syed (2007) and Persell (2010) queried sociological leaders’ rankings of learning goals for the Introductory Sociology course. They found a high degree of consensus among their respondents (past ASA presidents, regional association presidents, ASA Dissertation Award winners, ASA Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award winners, ASA Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline winners, and NSF grant recipients in sociology) on five top goals. These included: “Show the relevance and reality of structural factors in social life,” “Place an issue in a larger context,” “Identify and offer explanations for social inequality,” “Recognize the difference between empirical and normative statements,” and “Compare and contrast one’s own context with those in other parts of the US and the world.” These goals are quite broad, and no specific sociological concepts or skills were identified. Essentially, they advocate helping students to develop a sociological perspective and its application to social issues.
A habit of the mind approach can draw on the data cited previously to argue that because there appears to be limited agreement on core topics, why not focus our attention on broad agreement that is either tacitly there already or could be more easily attained? What particular topics one covers in Introductory Sociology are less important as long as the course digs deep enough into at least one topic (and probably more) to expose the sociological perspective, basics of the research process, and the implications of the findings.
Key Sociological Content—The Long or Short List
The next step on our continuum includes those attempts to define a core—either in terms of a relatively few concepts or topics or a somewhat more detailed list. Drawing on the typical terms used in faculty recruitment, we have called these the long list or the short list. As in hiring practices, the numbers on either list are somewhat arbitrary, and all too often, so is placement on one or the other. In addition, some lists are more proscriptive than others.
The longest lists of concepts are those contained in standard Introductory Sociology textbooks (both the comprehensive and brief editions). Sociologists collectively have not agreed on the core content, and there is a great variety among the books (see Keith and Ender 2004b). Similarity in the structure of the books and chapter headings and the extensive use of textbooks in courses implies that there is some agreement on what constitutes the core content of sociology. Some contend that this consensus also makes sociology textbooks inherently conservative and that market forces “interact to discourage more vibrant content” (Manza, Sauder, and Wright 2010).
Because individual faculty members may have differing ideas about what constitutes a core in sociology (if anything), textbooks in Introductory Sociology and major subfields help define for students and faculty key perspectives, concepts, and skills in each major area. Textbooks give the discipline a sense of cohesion and help spell out the major themes, perspective, and methods used in sociology (Bart and Frankel 1986). Although there is not agreement on all of these, the fact that texts lay out a systematic look at the field results in a public face for sociology, one that those outside the field (e.g., students taking a single sociology course) can understand and explain.
At the other end of the spectrum, perhaps the most proscriptive and shortest core list comes from Davis (1983). He argued that we should teach five basic empirical results that have been carefully documented with a large body of research: cohorts and educational attainment, ascriptive factors and educational attainment, homogamy and the transmission of privilege, education and intergenerational occupational mobility, and education, generation, and attitudes. Although Davis’s argument is based on solid empirical findings, if more recent data and textbook sales are to be believed, he does not appear to have engendered much of a following.
In between the long and short lists are a series of efforts that might be characterized by seeing the core as a set of foundational theories, ideas, concepts, and methods. A good example of this approach is D’Antonio’s (1983) essay, “Nibbling at the Core,” in which he developed a list of topics and concepts that included theorists (Marx, Durkheim, Mead, and Weber), theories (functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interaction), research methods (related concepts and approaches), and a list of “key” sociological concepts (e.g., inequalities, groups, socialization, and social change). D’Antonio noted there was nothing particularly unique about his list and that the majority of introductory sociology textbooks covered everything on the list along with a myriad of other topics and concepts.
In a more recent follow-up to D’Antonio (1983) that also served as an attempt to define and assess student learning of a core in introductory sociology courses at a single institution, Howard et al. (2014) focused on four areas: (1) a sociological perspective (e.g., the sociological imagination), (2) sociological theory (e.g., structural functionalism, social conflict theory, symbolic interactionism), (3) research methods (e.g., hypothesis, independent versus dependent variables, qualitative versus quantitative methods), and (4) key concepts (e.g., cultural relativism vs. ethnocentrism, manifest vs. latent functions, relativity of deviance). The authors, similar to D’Antonio, acknowledge that their choice of key concepts was driven by a need to find common concepts across all sections of the introductory course at their institution rather than being an attempt to suggest their key concepts were somehow more central to the discipline than other concepts (Howard et al. 2014).
The struggles of D’Antonio (1983) and Howard and colleagues (2014) to develop a list of key concepts for Introductory Sociology reflect a broader need within the discipline to address the challenge of defining a core. Liberal Learning and the Sociology Major Updated (McKinney et al. 2004) offers 16 recommendations that can serve as a starting point for discussion. However, to implement these recommendations and new recommendations in the forthcoming edition, sociologists will need increased dialogue on what is central to the discipline in terms of concepts, perspectives, and skills and what is nonessential. That is, a policy suggestion that calls for a methods course presumes agreement on what that methods course does or should cover, and this may necessitate more discussion.
In response to the pressures for sociology to be part of general education curricula and indicate the objectives to be met by sociology, the ASA Task Force Report on Sociology and General Education (Keith et al. 2007) produced a sociology core consisting of six content areas in which sociology contributes to general education:
the interplay between the macro- and microstructures of the social world;
the structural aspects of inequality;
the properties of social groups;
the importance of context (not only structural components but also spatial and temporal properties, including cultural contexts and dynamic processes);
how individuals are connected to society;
explanations of social change.
Based on this review, it appears that the key question is whether the core of sociology should center on covering a small number of topics in depth to expose students to the “habits of the sociological mind” or should be built around a more comprehensive or foundational core set of perspectives, theories, concepts, and methods/skills; this core would include and go beyond the sociological imagination, which is built on throughout the sociology curriculum and required of the sociology major. In the next section, we review the arguments supporting each perspective.
What should the core look like?
The Case for a Habit of the Mind
This perspective argues that the core of sociology, especially as taught in Introductory Sociology courses and carried through the major, should be based on the particular sociological habits of the mind that are illustrated and augmented by in-depth analyses of a select number of topics. We provided three examples, mentioned previously, of different habits of the sociological mind—the sociological imagination (Mills 1959), the sociological eye (Collins 1998), and the meliorative approach of Abbott (2000); the sociological perspective is also common. There is certainly a considerable and contradictory diversity in these characterizations. Abbott, for example, uses the term loose collection to characterize the substance of sociology and calls for our common endeavor to be “melioration,” while Collins (1998) provides numerous examples of how to do sociology in everyday encounters. But all versions present the same dilemma for constructing an Introductory Sociology course that accomplishes what beginning courses undertake in most other disciplines: providing students with an understanding of the fundamental findings that are congealed into the canon of the discipline and providing students with a foundation for acquiring that knowledge in the introductory course and the major.
Most faculty members who teach introductory sociology and think about the content are aware of both the virtues and shortcomings of building the course around textbooks that survey the discipline. The virtue is that such texts provide instructors—particularly new instructors and the increasing array of adjuncts and contingent faculty (now roughly 75 percent of college instruction in the U.S.)—with an organizational framework for the course that has the potential to produce in the students a sense of the substantive geography of sociological analysis. Students receive core content that has predictability, provides building blocks for the major, and ensures that instructors with less training and graduate teaching assistants cover the same agreed on content that includes sociological perspectives, theories, content, and skills/methods.
The flaws, according to those opposed to a comprehensive core, begin with the inaccuracy of the geography itself, considering that Introductory Sociology is a “loose collection” of topics. Schwartz and Smith (2010) contend such textbooks attempt to survey a body of knowledge that cannot be easily surveyed. Inevitably, survey textbooks present only a sample (and one that is not necessarily representative) of the many areas of sociology. Opponents of textbook-based survey courses argue that students who emerge from even the most charismatically taught, survey text–based introductory course arrive at the final with an imperfect sense of the geography and a false-positive set of core concepts.
An even greater danger in utilizing a common survey textbook to frame a core for Introductory Sociology is that instructors are encouraged to try to cover far more material than can reasonably be taught and learned in a single course. This problem is not unique to sociology. Fink (2003) argues that most college teachers’ learning goals are very content driven—remember (at least until the exam) whatever I say during class. Fink points out that professors tend to focus primarily on covering content, which typically means introducing students to as much of the disciplinary jargon as possible. Similarly, Weimer (2013) suggests that our obsessive focus on covering content is actually a barrier to student learning. Even when they are attentive and motivated, students tend to adopt a superficial approach to learning—temporarily memorizing content with little understanding of it—in response to a faculty members’ focus on content coverage (typically through extensive reliance on lecturing). This practice leads to what has been called the “forgetting curve”—only 45 percent of students remember material just presented, and less than one-quarter can recall it eight weeks later (Menges 1988).
According to the logic of a habit of the mind approach, Introductory Sociology courses and major courses should abandon the attempt to convince their students that they are actually receiving a good sense of the substantive geography of the discipline. Instead, they should impress on the students that sociology is a “loose collection” of areas and that the course will present a small, narrow, and unrepresentative sample of these areas. Of course, such a purposefully unrepresentative selection still leaves much room to maneuver in terms of selecting subject matter, and there have been many proposals about how to make such a selection. Better (2013), for example, selected topics that would be amenable to students conducting naturalistic experiments and even micro-level research in their everyday lives, illustrating the sociological eye and search for meliorative implications. Schwartz and Smith (2010) selected “hot” topics in which students had a priori interests. These selections and most others allow for a kind of modified core in which the selected topics hit some key sociological ideas and reach into at least some of the larger and more prominent concepts in the loose collection of areas that constitute sociology. Hot topics or concepts that are amenable to micro-level research can be selected from a wide enough range of substantive subjects to constitute a semblance of coverage, and these teachers, like most others, seek to cover the various areas that they believe most effectively highlight the contributions of the discipline.
More generally, those who teach using this approach should impress on the students that the topics were selected because they are useful for introducing students to the discipline’s core activity—Collins’s (1998) sociological eye, Abbott’s (2000) meliorative analysis, or—probably the most commonly cited core activity—Mills’s (1959) sociological imagination. Advocates of developing habits of the mind argue that doing so requires sacrificing breadth for depth and that this depth will better introduce students to what sociology is and can be and will have a greater possibility of leading to more in-depth and lasting learning.
The Case for a More Comprehensive Core
Sociologists who support the need for a core at the center of sociological teaching and curricula advocate a shared foundation for beginning students, sociology majors, and the curriculum. Proponents of this approach suggest the core should include a combination of perspectives (e.g., sociological imagination or a sociological eye), major theoretical approaches, and major concepts. It does not presuppose that one concept or theory is superior to another, just that these elements make up the core to which students should be exposed. The idea is that individual teachers and departments can use these examples of a core when developing classes and curricula.
Proponents of a more comprehensive core suggest that to focus on one or a few subjects while compressing the coverage of others may create a distorted sense of the field. In effect, a habit of the mind approach can make the few topics covered a de facto core, while a more comprehensive core would include the cross-cutting perspectives (theories), content (concepts), and methods (skills) a foundational core for the discipline. This core is revealed in a particular department’s curricular plan and assessment goals; it applies to each level of analysis—from a nation and states’ educational goals to university, college, and departmental goals to individual faculty and course goals. Each of these levels of the core needs to coincide for a coherent curriculum. Well-written, introductory textbooks can play a valuable role in helping to establish a core curriculum.
Many leading introductory texts discuss, give examples, illustrate with research, and ask students to practice using the theoretical approaches and methods of sociology. Advocates of presenting a core using a textbook argue that students can take away a solid understanding of the unique perspective sociology brings to understanding the world with the help of thought-provoking examples and exercises for students. Lending coherence to students’ understanding and attracting attention and interest to the field are reasons enough to see value in the role of textbooks in helping to formulate a sociological core.
In summary, supporters argue a core is needed for coherence and to bring structure and objectives to the introductory course and major curriculum, provide minimum standards, and present a common public face.
Agreement exists among sociology leaders and in publications on teaching introductory-level and major courses in sociology on many themes across several frameworks, including how students see the world through a sociological eye (see e.g., Persell 2010; Persell et al. 2007). There is enough overlap in various frameworks to identify broad learning objectives, categories of knowledge, themes, and skills. Although agreement on a detailed list of core concepts has not yet emerged, especially in larger departments (Greenwood 2013), many of today’s curriculum leaders in sociology would argue that it is possible to establish a shared framework with learning goals and assessment measures. As mentioned, a number of efforts have taken place in recent years; sociologists with expertise in curricular issues have discussed elements of a core under the auspices of the National Standards for High School Sociology (American Sociological Association 2015a) Task Force, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the ASA Task Force to revise Liberal Learning and the Sociology Major, and other local and regional groups, including those developing transfer articulation policies and accrediting bodies.
Some consensus is emerging over elements to be introduced in standards and requirements. Most efforts have multiple dimensions that address the criticism that core is merely a list of concepts. Rather, some of the emerging core components provide broad guidelines but do not dictate specific concepts and content. Some departments mandate the broad areas that must be included in the introductory course and to prepare for the major.
One set of exceptions is departments with a targeted curriculum including coherent clusters of courses in key areas. In this circumstance, the faculty members could agree that the introductory course cover a core set of subjects that would reflect the specific focus of sociology and the department. In this way, even with a wide variety of implementations, certain subjects would be covered so that subsequent courses could expect students to have useful exposure to the foundational ideas and substance that their specialized courses would cover. In effect, this would not involve deciding on a core for the discipline but rather developing a core of subjects researched and taught in that department.
Summary and discussion: where do we go from here?
We have argued that there are at least three possible responses to explain the lack of an agreed on core. The first is to conclude that sociology either has no core or that identifying the core is an impossible task. However, given external forces from accreditation agencies, assessment regimes, mandated articulation agreements between institutions, trends toward interdisciplinary courses and programs, and other pressures, this option, whatever its intellectual merits, is likely not viable. If sociologists don’t define a core for themselves, someone else will define one for us.
The second option, a habit of the mind approach to the core, is relatively uncontroversial as far as it goes. The question becomes whether a habit of the mind approach is sufficient by itself as the key goal of introductory sociology, expressing the core of the discipline. If not, as proponents of a long or short list of key content would argue, then what should be added? In the near term, it will likely be difficult to attain agreement on a long list, but a short list of agreed on concepts and topics may be within reach. Indeed, some efforts are currently underway, including the Social Science Research Council’s Measuring College Learning project and the revision of Liberal Learning and the Sociology Major for the third edition.
Given the limited success of past efforts on identifying or establishing a core, to argue for a more comprehensive core requires us to provide some suggestions—both intellectual and organizational. A good place to begin is with guidelines found in Liberal Learning and the Sociology Major Updated (McKinney et al. 2004), some of which provide clear guidance about aspects of the common core that should be a part of introductory sociology. The “empirical base of sociology” should be infused “throughout the curriculum” (Recommendation 4, McKinney et al. 2004:8). This implies the core should include some exploration of research methods in sociology. Issues of race/class/gender (Recommendation 8) and “multicultural, cross-cultural, and cross national” content (Recommendation 9) are central to what we need to teach (McKinney et al. 2004:18–19). Recommendation 10, that we should “recognize explicitly the intellectual connections between sociology and other fields” (McKinney et al. 2004:19), is also particularly critical in the introductory course since this is often the only course that students will take in our discipline. If we do not focus on our connection to related fields in the first course, then we will have failed in this basic expectation. Liberal Learning and the Sociology Major is currently being revised with the expectation that the third edition will provide greater guidance and clarity regarding a core in sociology. We may expect the same benefits from the forthcoming Measuring College Learning report.
Persell et al.’s (2007) study of sociological leaders’ rankings of learning goals for the introductory sociology course provides a level of guidance similar to that found in Liberal Learning. They found a high degree of consensus among their respondents on five top goals. These included: “Show the relevance and reality of structural factors in social life,” “Place an issue in a larger context,” “Identify and offer explanations for social inequality,” “Recognize the difference between empirical and normative statements,” and “Compare and contrast one’s own context with those in other parts of the US and the world.”
Both the Liberal Learning and the Sociology Major Updated (McKinney et al. 2004) guidelines and Persell et al.’s (2007) goals are skeletal by design. We can add to them by asking: What are the concepts, ideas, and basic insights of sociology that we want students to learn and retain long after they finish the course? Although the potential list of key concepts is endless, these documents point to the importance of including an understanding of social inequalities, recognition of how context matters, and the influence of groups at all levels (micro, meso, macro) on individuals’ behaviors and beliefs.
A combined approach to agreeing on a core may be the best strategy. First, the American Sociological Association has made significant progress identifying aspects of the core in multiple documents, including Liberal Learning and the Sociology Major Updated (McKinney et al. 2004), ASA’s Sociology and General Education (Keith et al. 2007), and the recently published National Standards for High School Sociology (American Sociological Association 2015a). The forthcoming revisions to Liberal Learning and the Sociology Major are likely to take us a step further.
Second, top-down leadership from the ASA needs to be combined with a bottom-up approach wherein faculty members collectively identify the key concepts, perspectives, and methodological approaches that should be included in the core in a particular department, particularly as they are presented in Introductory Sociology courses and carried through the major curriculum. When faculty members design a course, they should begin with the end in mind. What are the learning outcomes students will achieve as a result of participating in the course—and indeed, in our curriculum as a whole (see e.g., Greenwood and Howard 2011)?
These discussions are likely to be less common than needed at present, and thus they could prompt—from the ground up—a thousand points of light that help to energize the discipline. We suggest that we continue to have such discussions at professional meetings but that we also need to have them in other settings, including with each other in our programs and departments, with our colleagues across different types of institutions (including local high schools), and with our public constituents in the political, medical, and governmental realms.
Finally, it is important to return full circle to two points that we made at the outset of the paper: There are both organizational and intellectual reasons for sociology to have a core. Organizationally, if we do not establish a foundation, others will—and in fact are—doing so for us. Leaving discussions about the core to external forces is at best unwise and potentially quite damaging to our discipline requirements. Whenever we write a recommendation letter for students pursuing graduate study in sociology or make a decision on whom to admit for graduate study, in addition to overall fitness to do any graduate work, we draw on some set of implicit criteria for what constitutes whether or not the student knows enough about sociology to merit further study.
All of these everyday practices build on some conception of a sociological core, and we support the major efforts at defining a core that are currently underway, as seen in the companion piece to this article. A good amount of learning theory (e.g., Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel 2014) points to the importance of reflection. Perhaps a heavy dose of reflection on what we see as the core of sociology will help us, our students, and our discipline move sociology to the fore in today’s world.
Footnotes
Editors’ Note
Reviewers for this manuscript were, in alphabetical order, Rebecca Bach and Jeffrey Chin.